Are your apps burning out your phone?
Online security company AVG Technologies released its quarterly report this week on the apps that are sucking the most life out of your phone -- and taking the most time out of your life. The finger points at gambling, dating and the weather.
"Many of us take everyday practical apps like weather and chat for granted and despite spending little time on them, the impact on our devices is actually quite significant," said Tony Anscombe, Senior Security Evangelist at AVG Technologies. "A number of unexpected apps such as these are consuming battery, storage, and data traffic without users' knowledge -- and, in many cases, for no good reason. So if you're wondering why you're not getting the best performance out of your device, this could well be why."
AVG analysts looked at anonymous data from over one million Android users to identify the worst obvious offenders and the ones that are sapping power, memory and data without a peep.
It may come as no surprise that Spotify and Amazon's Kindle app top the list for overall impact on a phone's performance when you go to listen to music or read a book. But when AVG looked at the apps that hurt performance most without even being open, Facebook was the number one culprit.
It uses the most data of all the apps that automatically run when you turn on your phone. Of the other nine in the top 10, three were weather apps: Yahoo Weather, the Weather Channel app and WeatherBug.
Tumblr took the cake for highest data usage among user-run apps, beating out Snapchat, Netflix and Spotify for the dubious distinction. Coming in at number 10 was the Tinder dating app.
Spotify takes up the most room on your device. AVG pointed out that the music streaming app allows 3,333 songs to be stored locally, which can eat up storage, while its data-heavy music and video service can drain your data plan allowance.
What about your non-digital resources? AVG found that people are more likely to get lost for long stretches of time playing card and casino games than casual strategy games and puzzles.
Here are the apps that do the most damage to your phone's performance, not including games, according to the new AVG report: